Well, i decided to purchase a Dual Athlon. I have found a place near my town where there are several hardware gurus who helps you to mount the computer. You can go there with the hardware and not neccesary to buy it to them.
Now the problem is that i do not have idea of what a cool motherboard can be for what i want. I want a very good one, for dual athlon, 1 gb ram, hd 7200rpm...
I have heard MSI as a good choice...

could anyone tell me a good motherboard i can buy?

THANKSSS!!!

StefanDidak

01-29-2003, 01:00 AM

My advice for dual AMD's is usually K7 and K7X (/Pro) series.
Haven't run into serious trouble with them.

elvis

01-29-2003, 01:24 AM

there are two dual athlon chipsets: the 760MP and the 760MPX. the MPX is basically much the same as the MP with a few tweaks and fixes done by AMD.

my advice is whatever board you choose, try and get yourself an MPX chipset. the Asus A7M-266D is not a bad board. i believe epox and msi also make entry level boards.

Tyan make a few different dual athlon boards, and have been around a while. their boards are typically a little pricier, but usually quite stable.

Gilgamesh

01-29-2003, 02:27 AM

I am also in the market for a dual athlon board, I've been eyeing the Asus one. Just curious, I saw pricing for A7M266, without the D. I was confused, because it was also very cheap. Is this a different board, or a screw up on the part of this retailer?
Also, do you know of any dual proc boards that have onboard USB 2.0, firewire, and raid?

DDrake

01-29-2003, 02:36 AM

i have taken a look at the webpage of AMD on the recommended boards and i think i´ll buy an ASUS one :P they look very powerfull. Right now i own a Tyan one, that would be another choice too.

little

01-29-2003, 03:07 AM

check out 2cpu.com there forums have a lot of good help i bought a msi k7d master L and i couldnt be happier but alot of people also like the asus boards but i wouldnt trade in my msi for anything

Sieb

01-29-2003, 03:13 AM

I was always a fan of the K7D Master by MSI. But I am an MSI fan too. The Asus board is a good one. Try to stick with MPX, its a newer chipset, makes things a little more user friendly if your using it as a desktop system also. Id stay away from Tyan boards, they are more server oriented, like the Thunder, but the Tiger is a good board if you just have to have a Tyan board. I have it running a webserver right now. Gigabyte has a nice board also.

DDrake

01-29-2003, 03:29 AM

What do you think about this system? is that correct? is good? the other options like graphic card and monitor are appart, am i forgetting something? :D Your expert advice is greatly appreciated!

- Motherboard Asus A7M266-D

- Processors AMD ATHLON XP 2400+ 2.000GHz

- RAM 512MB PC2100 DDR-266 Siemens (x2)

- DD 120Gb UDMA 7200 rpm Seagate

- FANs AMD

- Power Supply 400w

little

01-29-2003, 05:22 AM

spend the extra and get the mp chips anything over 1800 and your looking at moding the chip and you dont want to be doing that also the mp's do run a little more stable also on the fans i ditched the amd stock ones and went with a pair of zalmans ( im not sure of the model but if you want my to ask and ill look it up for you ) they work well are preaty quiet and last but not least look rocken

elvis

01-29-2003, 07:45 AM

agreed. get MP processors and ECC/Registered memory. you'll save yourself an awful amount of banging your head against a wall.

DDrake

01-29-2003, 08:43 AM

Ummm, those specifications are from a local seller. I tough that the processor was a MP and the Ram was ECC/Registered... i have to ask them. Thanks a lot for the input, i could have done a mistake :D

little: i´d like a lot if you could tell me that model. I´m lost in almost everyfield of creating anything other than a 3d model :D

little

01-30-2003, 12:56 PM

http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/cnps5100Cu.htm
you can also get fan adaptors from
http://www.coolerguys.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=001&Category_Code=F-FAD
using those you can use 80 m fans so you can run them even slower and keep the system quiter
another nice thing about these fans is that they bolt onto the board and dont use a clip so there isnt any worry about breaking anything when your putting them on

Bradf0rd010

01-30-2003, 01:53 PM

Do the likes of the SwifTech MCX462 and Alpha PAL 8045 not fit on dual AMD boards?
Personally, I wouldn't choose Zalman as a cooling solution.

GregHess

01-30-2003, 04:00 PM

The 8045 and the swiftech's don't fit.

The Zalman's are not designed to cool dual cpu's because of the bracketed fans. What ends up happening is cpu #2 gets far too little airflow, and you get inconsistencies with temps between cpu 1 and 2. Not a good idea.

Zalman's are great heatsinks if your building a grandma box, or low budget websurfacing/consumer machine. Their quiet, and they give low-medium cooling performance.

For performance systems I like to recommend thermalright products, the AX7, the SK7, and the SLK700 and SLK800. The AX7 is now out of production, so its a bit harder to come by. I think the best fit scenario for the dual asus would most likely be a pair of SLK800's, with two 80mm adjustable rpm fans. This way you get unbelievable cooling, with very little noise.

Anyone running the SK7's on the A7M266-D? I got the ax7's to fit by creative bending, don't know if the SK7 will fit by default.

little

01-31-2003, 12:38 AM

my zelamns are running great and iv had them for months with out any problems and i do a lot more then surfing i spend most of my time in 3d the zelamn flowers do suck but thats not what i got i would say that if your over clocking you might not want a zelamn but i wouldnt recomend overclocking a dual system anyway

the 8045 will fit but you will have to mod the heat sink a little on cpu 2 they work well but there alot louder

i dont want to turn this into a this cooler is better then that cooler thread i found a cooler that i like and it works very well for me there are a lot of 2cpu guys on www.2cpu.com that are very helpfull on these matters you might want to check it out aswell a dual system is going to cost a lot of cash so i would recomend reading everything you can before you buy

elvis

01-31-2003, 02:09 AM

Originally posted by Gilgamesh
I am also in the market for a dual athlon board, I've been eyeing the Asus one. Just curious, I saw pricing for A7M266, without the D. I was confused, because it was also very cheap. Is this a different board, or a screw up on the part of this retailer?
Also, do you know of any dual proc boards that have onboard USB 2.0, firewire, and raid?

A7M266 is based on the AMD760 chipset from memory. this is a single processor board only. the A7M266-D is the 760MPX chipset, which is dual processor.

off the top of my head, i don't know of any dual athlon boards with usb 2.0 and firewire. the 760MPX is the most recent dual athlon chipset, and it is getting quite old now.

rumours abound of a new chipset of the barton-based athlon MPs due out in roughly a month. my guess these will certainly be 333MHz FSB, but as to the add-ons i really have no idea. it'd be nice to see a company other than AMD start making these dual-processor chipsets.

read the bio pages on nvidia's website, and some of the nvidia lads are ex-AMD. stands to reason that the nforce2 is such a good athlon chipset. wouldn't it be great if nvidia could take this to the workstation market with an "nforce2-d" chipset?

1) The 8045's DO NOT FIT. They require that the motherboard have 4 holes around the socket, which is NOT the case on dual athlon motherboards.

I can absolutely possitively confirm this fact. I purchased two Alpha 8045's and had the bottoms machine smoothed, and neither would fit on the A7M266-D because of the lack of socketed holes. Once again, these DO NOT mount via the socket, and require 4 holes around the socket to use. Dual AMD boards DO NOT have these holes.

http://www.3dluvr.com/crossbow/incoming/Photos/Computers/paste1.jpg

Note the lack of holes around the A7M266-D. They're filled.

2) The Zalman uses a bracket to mount a 80 or 92 mm fan above the cpu. Because of the positioning of the cpu's in a dual cpu system, this will not work, as one of the fans will not fully overlap cpu #2.

For a current list of performing heatsinks check...

www.overclockers.com

www.frostytech.com

little

01-31-2003, 05:03 AM

here we will do it like this

Mr Hess

as i said before one of the things i liked about the zelmans i have is the fact they dont mount on the socket the mount to the board

so i have to ask are these the holes i would have to have to mount the fans i said i mounted ?
http://littlebigtoe.com/wip/msi/pic_01.jpg
or is it these holes ?
http://littlebigtoe.com/wip/msi/pic_02.jpg
like i said i didnt like the zalman flowers they suck these are the zalmans i have

http://littlebigtoe.com/wip/msi/pic_03.jpg
http://littlebigtoe.com/wip/msi/pic_04.jpg
and here they are monuted on my dual board
http://littlebigtoe.com/wip/msi/pic_05.jpg
im not one thats into moding my hardware i have to have it for work so i cant afford the down time of a screwed up modo job i also dont like alot of noise so as i said i choose the zelmans because there a little quiter
they do make a fan that does have a fan that hangs out on an arm

they look like this and yes they are only good for slow systems that dont make much heat

so i gusse i would have to say in closing that mr hess you really dont have a clue about what your talking about and so before you spout off please do a LITTLE bit of research

and in closing i will say for the record that the pics of the motherboard with out the cpu's installed were not taken on my own board because i wasnt going to pull my system apart it was taken from a great review of the MSI K7D Master L on vipers lair
http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/cpu_mobo/msi/smp/k7d_v2/k7dl.shtml it is the same board its just that theres was photographed with out cpus on it

Bradf0rd010

01-31-2003, 05:17 AM

On the one hand, I believe you also get mounting holes on the Iwill MPX2 board (note that's not an MPX2 chipset, it's just the name of the board). Also a very well rated board. Well pointed out there, little.

On the other, in Greg's defence I think he made a little slip up regarding the mounting holes based on his own experience. Speaking as a hardware journalist myself, I've always found what he's got to say hardware wise to be right on the money.

GregHess

01-31-2003, 01:15 PM

The board designation mentioned directly before your post was the a7m266-D, which was what I'm referring too. The majority of Dual athlon boards do NOT have mounting holes. Even earlier revisions of the MSI have them sealed up.

As to the Iwill board....

I wasn't aware it even had mounting holes. Thanks for the pics. The Iwill is the only Dual Athlon motherboard I haven't had experience with...as I've avoided them as a company since the KT133A chipset. (Had a bunch of issues with some of their boards...including one that one of my friends has rma'd three times, and I'm almost sure they're sending him the same board back each time).

The mounting holes was a very sore issue for many Dual athlon users, as many purchased a variety of cooling devices (like the swiftech, or the pal) and were unable to use them, even though the manufacturer's site clearly showed photos of the motherboard with the socketed holes.

As for not knowing what I'm talking about...It might help if you actually used board designations and heatsink designations, instead of just randomly quoting company names. Had you designated the zalman heatsinks you were using, I would have changed my comments. Almost all of their heatsinks, including the ones you posted, use a similar fin spread design, and can be called "flower" heatsinks.

Doing tech support via forum's and email is quite possibly the hardest thing for an admin/consultant to do...mostly cause no one ever gives you all the information...

I also find it interesting how easily and quickly one can get bashed for helping. I guess it has to do with all the anonomitity. Its easy to bash someone when your name isn't on the line. Eh Little? Before it was ruined, the discreet webboard was possibly the most civil forum I've ever been a part of...mainly due to the fact that everyone was required to use their full real name.

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